


some amusement

by orphan_account



Series: game on [2]
Category: Hamilton - Miranda
Genre: BLARGH, Gen, this au is the Worst but i'm gonna keep writing it to amuse myself honestly
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-05
Updated: 2016-05-05
Packaged: 2018-06-06 11:54:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,226
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6752878
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Some ambassadors, a briefing, and an ambivalent Aaron Burr.</p>
            </blockquote>





	some amusement

**Author's Note:**

> what did no one ask for? that's right, another short part to this little verse! gotta start somewhere, right?
> 
> reading the other fic isn't necessary to understand this in the slightest! just note that this verse is a tiny bit (or a lot bit) inspired by the west wing.
> 
> positions at this time period:  
> aaron is deputy chief of staff, to franklin's chief of staff. hamilton is communications director, laurens is his deputy, and eliza is their assistant. angelia is press secretary. mulligan is executive secretary, but he's really only mentioned in this fic (D:). 
> 
> this is about a year into washington's first term, so 2012? 
> 
> there is one word of spanish in this entire fic but i'm still going to put my usual "i'm only familiar w/ peruvian spanish" disclaimer here. so. there.
> 
> enjoy ! <3

It begins with a bang, with an over-exaggerated, “Monsieur Hamilton!” coming from the bullpen. Big hand gestures, a brightly colored suit and tie. Burr’s eyes hurt looking at it, but he can’t draw his eyes away, from some reason.  
“Lafayette!” Hamilton yells, actually yells, running past Burr’s office, “I didn’t think you would drop by — should I grab Laurens? Have a little reunion? There’s a half-decent burger place a few blocks away, you’re not suddenly vegan, right?”

Burr whispers the (frankly ridiculous, way too long) name of the (alarmingly handsome, very young, way too tall) ambassador before him under his breath, for politeness’ sake, so that he can remember when he’s shaking the man’s hand, but the ambassador doesn’t look at him. He’s busy chatting with Hamilton (who apparently was a college friend of his. Who would have guessed? Not Aaron, if Hamilton hadn’t been talking about it non-stop. “My friend, the Ambassador to France,” or, “My old roommate Gil,” once a day for the past three weeks.)

“Oh,” says Hamilton, after a while of loud, French joking (as well as English joking and Spanish joking and Yiddish joking) and yelling for John, pointing towards Burr, “This is the guy John and I were talking about.”   
“Mr. Burr” says Lafayette, drawing out the “r,” in a way that doesn’t seem right, although it could just be an accent-thing, so Burr doesn’t bother to correct him, “A pleasure to meet you. John and Alexander have told me a lot about you. He says you are…”  
 “I’d rather not hear. Wonderful to meet you as well, Ambassador Lafayette. You can call me Aaron.”  
“Then you can call me,” Burr braces himself for the entire thing, but no, “Just Lafayette. Gilbert if you’re feeling flirty,” there’s a wink and a smile. He’s so young. (So is Aaron, but he’s different. He’s old for his age. Lafayette seems twenty at his thirty-two. Hamilton said once that he had thought Burr was forty during the campaign, until he googled him.  
They shake hands. Alexander smiles, pats both of their backs, Lafayette’s more intensely.  
“Well— oh, John’s here!” says Alexander, “John! Get your ass over here—“

It’s a welcome party, of sorts— lots of hugging, an alarming amount of obscenities, and the French ambassador shedding a few tears, for some reason. He doesn’t know the Laurens-Lafayette connection, but there’s clearly something, there, some kind of deep, intimate thing that Burr rarely gets himself too involved in investigating. They discuss old memories, some of which are dirtier than Aaron thinks are necessarily appropriate for work. Aaron has had his theories about Hamilton’s couplings, but the majority of them are nearly confirmed by this overheard conversation alone. It’s strange. Aaron wants to join in— Eliza certainly has, as have about fifty percent of the other assistants, acting shocked at things that aren’t really shocking in the slightest. But Aaron— doesn’t. He gets back to work instead.

“An ambassador from the U.K. is visiting your office, later,” says an intern he doesn’t know, rolling his eyes, “Because he doesn’t like Ben. For some reason. Have fun.”  
 “Name?”  
“John Church. He’s really sweet. Angelica was swooning over him earlier. I was too, if we’re being honest, uh, I. I’ll shut up, now.”   
“Why are so many ambassadors coming this week?”  
 “Ask your boss, Mr. Burr. I think it’s just diplomacy season.”  
 “It’s always diplomacy season,” he says, waiting for a laugh, which he doesn’t get, so instead, he says, “Thanks. You can go now.” He turns back to his computer.

He types, for a while, some quick notes on spending which Ben requested. Then, fifteen minutes later, he gets the alarm he always gets this time of day, and goes onto YouTube, so as to see the press briefing. It buffers, he hates livestreams, and then a woman he had seen only an hour previously emerges into the window.

“Hello,” says Angelica, monotonous, used to this. She’s not wearing her reading glasses today— did she have contacts? Burr should have noticed something like that, “I have two announcements, and then questions. First, the President and his staff are all very busy writing jokes for the Correspondents’ Dinner, tomorrow. So, watch out, Callender. I heard your name a few times,” a forced laugh break, followed by an uncomfortable silence, “Second, the Ambassador Church from the U.K. and Ambassador Lafayette of France are visiting the president, today, and will be discussing relations between our three nations, and there will definitely be photo ops, so, have a blast. So. Questions?” She’s tired today, that much is obvious.

There’s a chorus, if disheveled, of “Angie—“ and “Angelica—“ and “Miss Schuyler—,” the Miss Schuylers are newbies, the Angies are personal friends. And Maria Lewis. Because of course. Burr decides to tease Angelica about this in the future, writes himself an orange post-it note. (He has an intern who yelled at him for not color-coding his post-its, and she refused to shut up about it, so they came to the compromise that personal post-its are orange and work post-its are any other color. The intern wanted purple for meetings, blue for trips, yellow for Theo, pink for editing. He said it was pointless and he would never remember the system, but she had said it so many times that he remembers it anyway.)

He watches— mostly foreign policy questions, and, though Aaron admires the president, how did he get elected with a plan as vague as the one they have to work with. (Aaron could, he knows, suggest something, but it’s not like the President trusts Aaron like he trusts Hamilton or Franklin or even Laurens.)

“If we were going to war with the English, I feel like I’d know. The president and Prime Minister Frederick are currently on civil terms— You realize that all White House Twitter accounts are run by publicists, right? You understand sarcasm? Jokes? Okay,” says Angelica, shaking her head, “This is over. Have a nice day, everyone. I will see you all soon enough.”

Some reporters keep yelling her name, and Aaron tosses her a water bottle out of his office as she walks past. They have a system, for this. He keeps the brand she likes (Mulligan had mocked the two of them, for having preferred water bottle brands, once, but it was important. And didn’t Mulligan have important secretary things things to do, rather than mock staffers? God.)

He leaves for lunch to grab a salad from that new fast-food salad place that Liz from Interior won’t shut up about during their meetings on the new parks plan. He trusts her taste. It’s decent food, not really memorable, but he’ll tell Liz about it next time they meet. Which he hopes will soon. His babysitter texts him as he walks back, says that Theo is being picked up. She adds about twenty-seven smiley emojis afterwards. Aaron shoots back, as quickly as he can, “texting+driving is illegal in md put phone Down,” and receives no response. Which is good, he supposes. He doesn’t know why he sends Theo to school in Maryland, some liberal school in Bethesda, but she likes it, which is what matters, he knows. If she’s happy, he’s happy. He wishes he could be with her more. She’s whip smart, even at this age, he knows it. She’s learning two languages. She reads to him in them, before he tucks her in at night.

He arrives back in his office to Ambassador Lafayette lounging on his desk, tossing cheeseballs into John Laurens’ mouth, which is quite a distance away. Aaron is almost impressed. Lafayette, upon noticing him, almost falls off the desk, but instead bounces off.

“Sorry to interrupt, Aaron.”  
“No problem,” he says, smiling, despite the fact that people he just met today being on his desk is definitely a problem.

As Lafayette leaves, another man enters— tall, pale, alarmingly straight posture, brown hair gelled up off of his head. He smiles wide and tooth, but looks shocked to see Burr.

“I'm John Church,” says the man with an accent Aaron assumes is at least partially fake, no one actually talks like that, “You must be Andre Burr?”  
 “Aaron, actually. I'm named after my father, he was president of Princeton?" he needs to gloat, when things like this happen, "Pleasure to meet you, Ambassador.”  
“Oh, very sorry, Mr. Burr, won’t happen again.”

The meeting goes well, Burr hopes, but he’s not a huge fan of Church in terms of personality. He’s overbearing and a tad rude. And, as they bid each other adieu, Church asks where, Angie Schuyler’s office is, and says goodbye to Andre. Whoever the hell Andre is.

Eliza approaches him, as he walks to Laurens’ office to get the speech he has to take notes on, hands him another speech, “You’re only allowed to cut two-fifty words,” she says, “He made me promise to say that. It’s a good speech, though, I promise, I read it. I think Alex is insecure,” she giggles, a little bit.  
“Isn’t he always?”  
“Oh, shut up. He wants your opinion. It’s on the new financial plan Congress is trying to pass. He hates it, needs you to make it less biased.”   
“So does Laurens. Space funding.”  
 “You can speed-read, right? Isn’t that a child prodigy thing? Otherwise… good luck.”  
 “I can, Eliza,” he says, rolls his eyes.

He cuts five-hundred words off of Hamilton’s speech, fixes Laurens’ wording, which was too prose-y for his taste, as well as for the public’s.

“Can you go on Nightly News tomorrow?” asks Angelica, halfway through a sentence of Laurens’ speech on space funding.  
“Sure,” he says, not paying attention, “What for?”   
“US-UK relations. Apparently, there is reason for concern! Who would have guessed?”   
“I would, actually. Wonderful.”  
“I know, I know. Tell me things, asshole, I kind of need them to do my job,” she looks pissed, for a few seconds, but she gets distracted, “Did you meet Church?”  
 “He got my name wrong,” says Aaron, accidentally holding down the enter key for a few seconds too many. He backspaces furiously.  
She laughs out loud, “For real? He’s such a charmer, though.”  
 “You just think he’s pretty.”   
“He’s pretty and he’s smart as hell. Two birds, one stone.”  
 “Not smart enough to remember my name.”   
Angelica stares at him, for a second, frustrated, in a way, “He’s a good guy, Burr. Anyways, I don’t want to be with someone better than me. No fun there.”

He remembers when the two of them met on the campaign. They had flirted, briefly, but nothing came of it. There was a lot of wordplay, in the flirting. He thinks Angelica deserves better than Church, better than anyone, honestly, but he doesn’t say it our loud. They’ve agreed not to discuss relationships in depth with each other, for civility’s sake. They’re already pushing it.

He turns in his notes, realizes he has nothing left to do, but he’s stuck here for another few hours in case there’s an emergency.

So he bothers Alexander, who is outlining possible future speeches, for some reason, Lafayette on top of the desk and Laurens on his lap. Eliza sits on a short file cabinet by the desk, drinking one of Angelica’s water bottles.

“Aaron Burr! You seen Mulligan?” asks Laurens.  
 “I’m pretty sure he’s busy with  the president's life.”   
“We’re goin’ out tonight, want him to come too. You up for comin’?”  
 “I have a child, John.”  
 “Oh, true.”  
“Don’t you have a photo op, Ambassador?”  
 “Already done,” says Lafayette, popping one of the candies Eliza puts in a bowl on Alexander’s desk into his mouth, “Eliza, how dare you not remove the apple flavored ones?”   
“They’re the best ones, Gil,” says Eliza, defensively, “Actually, second to cherry. Cherry are the best ones.”  
“Blasphemy.”  
 Aaron grabs himself a grape one, sucks on it for a little bit.  
 “Flourishing or bountiful?” Alexander asks, out of nowhere.  
“Neither,” says Laurens.  
“What’s a synonym, then?”  
 “Inexhaustible, abundant?”  
 “Copious,” says Burr.  
“Gross.”  
“What’s the Spanish?” asks Eliza, "Go for a literal translation of that. "  
“I don’t fuckin’… generoso? Maybe? French, Lafayette? Can’t think of words, brain is dying.”  
 “I refuse to write this outline for you.” 

And so, it continues. Lafayette eats the entire candy bowl, like a child, but Burr is a little envious. He’ll ask Eliza where she buys the candies, say it’s for Theo. Eliza likes kids, he knows this, she ran a non-profit to help kids when she was a teenager, he heard once. She has to like kids. The hours wile away, and nothing happens. It’s nights like these that he hates the job, but he has decent, if annoying company. Eliza starts blasting Beyoncé, thirty minutes in, singing way too loudly, but it’s charming. He needs to download some of her music. He usually just uses Pandora, but he does see the merit in downloading something in case the entire world loses service, sometime in the future.

He metros home and finds the dog barking at him and Theodosia grasping his legs. Mulligan texts him approximately twelve photos of the wild night out, all of which heavily feature Lafayette, while he hears The Little Prince for the eightieth time in the last three months.

  He’s a little sick of the French, but he can deal with it, for now.

**Author's Note:**

> i'm rlly tired lol
> 
> leave comments please, they make my day!
> 
> hmu on twitter @farmerefuted if you wanna chat


End file.
